I cover cardiology news for CardioExchange, a social media website for cardiologists published by the New England Journal of Medicine. I was the editor of TheHeart.Org from its inception in 1999 until December 2008. Following the purchase of TheHeart.Org by WebMD in 2005, I became the editorial director of WebMD professional news, encompassing TheHeart.Org and Medscape Medical News. Prior to joining TheHeart.Org, I was a freelance medical journalist and wrote for a wide variety of medical and computer publications. In 1994-1995 I was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. I have a PhD in English from SUNY Buffalo, and I drove a taxicab in New York City before embarking on a career in medical journalism. You can follow me on Twitter at: @cardiobrief.

Resveratrol and Fraud

As I drilled Dr. Das’ former students with questions, I found that lead researchers like Dr. Das do not do any lab bench experiments. Students do all the work and submit their results to him via e-mail or by directly downloading data into his computer. Dr. Das says when he is not traveling his office is open and students can enter and download data directly onto his computer. I had previously visited Dr. Das at the University of Connecticut and noticed his office door was left open and anyone could have access to his computer.

One former student told me that typically lead researchers like Dr. Das write the introduction and conclusion of experiments and the students enter all the data, before publication in scientific journals. Dr. Das, who is busy lecturing all over the globe because of his groundbreaking studies, does not directly oversee tests that are performed, and neither do most other lead researchers. The University of Connecticut report says the university holds Dr. Das responsible for all of the data. Probably most lead researchers in scientific laboratories around the globe are vulnerable to errors or even fabrication of data by their students.

Factitious report

Why would the university issue a report that contained erroneous and misleading information itself? Not only did another senior researcher in his lab have a set of keys, and his students widely knew of this, but also another university investigator had broken the locks on his office door and removed data from his computer as well as private information such as bank account records and his passport, according to Dr. Das.

Let’s examine the level of evidence here. An analogy could be a murder case in a court of law where prosecutors may find a gun involved in the murder in a defendant’s desk drawer, they may find his finger prints on the gun, and the bullet that killed the deceased may have come from the same gun. But this evidence is circumstantial. It does not place the accused at the site of the crime or reveal a motive. Furthermore, just how a person could be held responsible for someone else using his gun (computer) goes unexplained, but that is the university’s position. Furthermore, in this instance, the murder (intended alteration of data with intent to deceive) was never committed. The western blot test was altered only for the purpose of meeting publication requirements.

University allegations fall apart

The more I asked questions the more that the university’s allegations were falling apart. The news media, in a rush to get their story out to the world, simply reported that Dr. Das had not returned their phone calls, which was pejorative. He was in no position to answer calls at his home or office in the US as he was attending a scientific conference in India. He was blindsided by the release of the report to the news media. He could not defend himself in a timely manner. The timing of the release of the University of Connecticut report appeared to be cunningly intended to limit Dr. Das’ ability to reply to these accusations.

The informant

Just what was the motive of the university’s informant? This is where this case turns into East Indian Bollywood intrigue without the dancers and singers. According to a former student of Dr. Das, the informant, an East Indian whose career had been furthered by Dr. Das, was quite jealous of other East Indian students whom Dr. Das also favored. The student says this informant even attempted to “pour wine directly down my throat” in an attempt to inebriate her and get her to reveal negative information about Dr. Das. Well, well.

Colleagues don’t believe the university

Dr. Das says many editors at scientific journals don’t believe the University of Connecticut report. They full-well know that editing of western blot tests is common practice and that the tests in question in no way invalidate his work and were only one part of the evidence provided in his papers from which Dr. Das drew conclusions. This is the case of scientific fraud that wasn’t.

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